A Visit to Ravenna Gardens

This past weekend Nigel and I ventured into Seattle to the Northwest Horticultural Society's Spring Ephemeral Plant Sale at the Center for Urban Horticulture, followed by lunch at University Village (an outdoor mall) and a visit to Ravenna Gardens, a small, boutique plant shop/urban nursery at the mall. Ravenna Gardens is just around the corner from the CUH, so combining the two always makes sense. Ravenna is a local vendor that always puts together a cool booth at the Northwest Flower and Garden Festival that very much reflects the shop, but in miniature. It's fun to get to see the real thing, and to peruse their full display of wares.

The shop is basically a free-standing square with doors on all four sides into the shop, with large items like arbors, furniture and weatherproof pottery arrayed outside

This colorful display of chairs and tables has been hanging here for years

Inside the shop is a warren of cubbies and aisles full of stuff!

Pristine Bromeliads

Some type of Calathea(?) and those corrugated pots -- if your taste runs to industrial, this is the shop for you!

Lots of little tender succulents

Tender houseplants

So much to see!

String of hearts/Ceropegia woodii

The now ubiquitous cactusware

These cabbage pots were fun and more my style than the industrial, but I can see the appeal of that style of decor

I should have bought one of those eye coffee mugs

Words to live by

These too!

These owl pots are funky and close up, those huge eyes can be rather creepy

They were a pretty penny too -- the larger ones were $128.00, the smaller one only $118.

These are a bit simpler and definitely cheaper

What would look good in an octagonal pot?

Outside were more industrial-style pots. 

These had the look of concrete, but I think they were fiberglass.

If you like rust, they can sell you that look too.

I've been coming to Ravenna for at least 8 years, and they always have this twiggy furniture for sale.

I could swear this very same covered bench has been here for 8 years

There's a very good selection of hardy plants for sale in the outside area too.

Very spring-like baskets, somewhat less kitschy than Watson's

Beautiful President Roosevelt Rhodies

A table full of special Windcliff plants

I've never seen variegated Kale before, it's called Kosmic Kale

Lush pots of Dragon tail fern

And hart's tongue fern

Nice contrast here -- normally the "go to" for contrast with purple foliage is a bright yellow or lime green, but the stripe works unexpectedly well

I didn't buy plants at Ravenna, although I was tempted. I had a tray overstuffed with plants already sitting in the back of the car, from the NHS plant sale that I'd been to earlier. I'm always more attracted to the fun and funky unique style of the accoutrements at Ravenna.

I bought a handmade pot, styled to look like something from the sea, with blue barnacles clinging to it and a texture reminiscent of coral.

At the moment it's sitting in the greenhouse with a recently purchased Aloe temporarily sitting in it. Possibly to become permanent. The Aloe also reminds me of a sea creature reaching out with its tentacles. It matches a Disneyland, Ariel-themed mug holding a seaweed-esque bird's nest fern and a still unplanted octopot, also blue.

I always leave Ravenna Gardens wishing I'd bought more. Their merchandise is pricey, but the non-plant wares are pretty fabulous and unique. It's a great shop for city gardeners.

What would you have spent your money on?

In A (Little) Vase on Monday

For my vase arrangement today I decided to go small, and pick a little posy of Cyclamen coum and Galanthus. I don't think it's any particular Galanthus. I'm not much of a Galanthophile, I probably just chose something labeled Galanthus nivalis from a catalog and stuck them in when they arrived. They're perhaps a little bit battered after our cold and snowy weather, but I thought they would make a nice little white ruff around the rim of the little vase. The leaves are from my Arum italicum 'Jack Sprat,' which is mottled with spots of black.

It's sitting upstairs on my bookcase, but for a change, it's next to a framed picture I made a while ago of a favorite Gertrude Jekyll quote, and a Limoges lidded pin box that I inherited from my mother-in-law.

Cyclamen coum, Galanthus nivalis, Arum italicum 'Jack Sprat' and a couple of sprigs of sweet box

I moved it briefly into the bathroom for the better lighting.

Arum italicum 'Jack Sprat'

A little ruff of snowdrops

The Cyclamen has a delicate scent only noticeable when you get close. This little vase is the same one that I had the Alstroemeria and Monstera leaves in last week. The Alstroemeria was past it, dropping petals right and left, but those Monstera leaves are still beautiful. I didn't think they'd fit in here, though, so I decided to completely immortalize them by scanning them. I've done this before with autumn leaves. I cut the stems off and laid them over each other and then scanned them with the scanner that I normally use for scanning documents or old, pre-digital photos.

They kind of look like aliens staring back at me

Still, I'm going to hang onto those leaves as long as I can.

The downstairs vase, by the kitchen sink, needed a bit of a redo. Most of the bottom portion of the stems on the Hellebores had gotten mushy, so I cut them off short, threw out the ones that were completely rotten and put them in a different, shorter vase. I'm pretty sure I don't change the water on my arrangements anywhere near often enough.

They're still being lifted up by the cat's dish (don't worry, it's not the only dish we have for feeding him, and that chubster will never starve)

Now that I've done my third one of these IaVoM posts, I've realized that they are an interesting exercise in repurposing as well as addictive. What parts of last week's arrangement are still good and how can I reuse them? I have an aversion to throwing out things that are still useful. My son can tell you I was one of those annoying mothers who insisted that you could still get that last drop of ketchup out of the bottle.

Cathy at Rambling in the Garden hosts In A Vase On Monday. Check out her post today and see what she put in a vase, and check out the posts from other bloggers who are participating like me!

Berry Cloche Tutorial

Given how well my Lupine seedlings did under my berry bottom cloches, and the interest in them in the comments, I thought I'd post a more detailed explanation of how I make them.

Start with a lidded plastic berry container, empty of course.

Cut the lid off and discard it

That leaves you with a cloche that has a lip all the way around -- make sure you use a berry container that has drainage holes

Cut off the two narrow ends of that lip of the berry container bottom

Then take a hole punch

Use the hole punch to punch a hole in both ends of the cloche

One tine of the earth staple goes through the hole to hold the berry cloche to the ground -- it's enough to keep it from blowing away

Now that the berry bottom has been flipped and is being used as a cloche, the drainage holes let in rain and air, and will allow hot air out on warm sunny days to keep the air inside from overheating.

And that's how I turn a plastic berry container into a cloche.

Bunny Infestation at Watson's Nursery

Watson's Nursery has been invaded by bunnies -- fortunately, they're all indoors, and they're Easter bunnies.

At first $40 seemed like a lot, but two plants, a bird's nest with eggs, plus the basket and ribbon, not to mention the worker's time to put it together, all add up

Bunnies and baskets galore

Love this bright crockery

How cute is this little cake plate with bunnies climbing on it?

If you have kids, think about giving them books instead of candy in their baskets. Of course, they would have to be pretty big baskets, but still...

Of course, you know all the most fun things about Easter are pagan, right? Including the bunny symbolism.

This little teapot with its cheerful message was tempting

Cactus and succulent-themed dishware and home decor seems to be the current hot trend.

Celebrate the return of spring by encasing some plants in glass

I rather like this one, with its egg-like shape, the fern and the purple-leaf plant, and the bit of too-big driftwood rising out of it

This was an intriguing construction of moss ball, driftwood and orchid

It's the perfect time of year to start thinking about putting together a big dish garden full of succulent and dry-loving houseplants too.

Some nice color echoes with the Echeveria nodulosa and Euphorbia trigona

This trio of ruffled Echeverias is such a perfect match for the bowl

It's all very spring-like, which is appropriate, since today is March 1, the first day of meteorological spring. Easter is coming up fast, it's only a month away. It's on Sunday, April 1. No fooling.

Wednesday Vignette

One last picture from the recent Northwest Flower and Garden Festival. This is from West Seattle Nursery's spa garden "Wabi-Sabi, Embrace Flawed Beauty," which won a multitude of awards at the show.

Although I won't be planting the marginally hardy Acacia cognata 'Cousin Itt' (there was a lot of it in this garden, you can just see it on the left) any time soon in my garden, I will definitely be trying this combo of Fritillarias and black mondo grass.

Anna at Flutter & Hum hosts Wednesday Vignette. Check out her post here.

Survivor

Back in January I posted about my plans for the new cutting garden that I created from one of my old raised vegetable beds. I had started sowing seeds in it under plastic berry container cloches, and with our warmer than normal January I had sprouts from the Lupine Russell mix by the bgeinning of February.

Sprouts first detected on February 6

With our recent very cold weather, I wondered and worried how those little sprouts with their seed leaves would do under snow and with night-time temperatures that went down into the low 20s (22 degrees Fahrenheit on at least one night).

Well, the snow has melted and it's a bit warmer, although still going down near frost each night.

But those little babies are doing just fine!

Baby Lupines doing fine!

There'll be a whole row of them

Come late spring, expect a whole row of them in the cutting garden, multicolored Lupine flowers all singing and disco-dancing to Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive!"